


Down the Drain

by Procrastynol



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Action/Adventure, Boys Being Boys, Canon Compliant, Cor is too old for babysitting them, Gen, Humor, I love the level design in this game but this one dungeon...!, Smelly Sewers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25944073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Procrastynol/pseuds/Procrastynol
Summary: Noctis and Prompto fall from grace inside of Crestholm Channels and Gladio keeps mocking them for it. Ignis tries to work out a solution. Cor just feels... old.Or: the level and environmental design in this game's dungeon areas is pretty amazing, but whoever decided to have a hole in the back of Crestholm dungeon through which you fall into a maze of everlasting agony is a being of pure evil. This is me dealing with that harrowing experience at the expense of our favourite chocobros.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Down the Drain

**Author's Note:**

> Look what the cat dragged in - an old draft buried on my abandoned hard drive. I'm pretty late to the party, but this game has been a part of my life for almost four years, and it's been a wild, wonderful and wistful ride. So, I thought it was about time to contribute something to the fandom - and now, here we are.

* * *

Noctis coughed and pushed himself to his feet, trying not to think about what he had just swallowed.

“You okay?” he turned to Prompto, whom he had grabbed in an attempt at defying gravity.

A futile attempt, not to mention, since now they both lay literally in the gutter, completely drenched.

“I’m fine,” his friend murmured and tried to brush the dirt off his jeans. “But you owe me a shower, dude. No, three showers – and a bath.”

And from the look of it, probably a new pair of jeans. Noctis shrugged. Fair enough, he thought.

“I told you not to fall through the hole,” Gladio’s voice echoed from above.

The prince rolled his eyes and looked up to the dim square of light over his head.

“You jinxed me, idiot!” he complained with crossed arms.

Gladio’s head appeared in the hole and the faces of Ignis and Cor soon followed, all of them showing expressions that covered the entire range of emotions from amused to annoyed. Ignis pinched the bridge of his nose and gave a quiet sigh.

“Marvellous,” he muttered under his breath. “Are the two of you hurt?”

“We’re okay,” Prompto called back. “A bit drenched, that’s all.”

And smelly, but that applied to all of them. Noctis gave a huff and turned around. The tunnel seemed to lead further down into the sewers.

“There’s a path down here,” he explained. “Do we follow it?”

Cor was the first to reply.

“ _Another_ way?” he raised an eyebrow.

Next to him, Gladio rolled his eyes with an annoyed groan.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” he grumbled. “As if you didn’t get us lost often enough _already_.”

If Noctis gaze could have killed people, Gladio would have been dead for the fifth time since stepping into the sewers of the Crestholm Channels. The Shield, however, wasn’t bothered by his charge’s sullen glare in the slightest.

“Are we really going to split up?” Prompto asked and shifted nervously. “We don’t know if we’ll find each other again.”

“Or the exit,” Gladio suggested dryly.

“Prompto does have a point,” Ignis agreed and tilted his head, glancing at Cor.

“Can you try to climb up?” the Marshal asked.

Noctis shrugged, unclipping his flashlight from his belt to check the walls. They shone in the light of the LED, glittering with water running down the smooth concrete surface. Prompto muttered something under his breath that sounded very much like a curse, and the prince couldn’t help but agree.

“Too slippery,” he decided after exchanging a momentary look with his best friend. “We could try, but we’d probably break our neck trying.”

Ignis and Cor nodded while Gladio gave a low chuckle.

“Just admit it, Princess, all of Iggy’s cooking has made you fat.”

Ignis rolled his eyes, Cor didn’t even dignify the jab with a reaction. Unlike Noctis.

“Just wait ‘til I get back up there, then we’ll know who of us has grown fat,” he threatened.

“ _If_ you get back up. Maybe _I_ should get _down_ instead.”

“Yeah, try that, _fatty_.”

“Well, while your bickering is truly mesmerizing, it doesn’t exactly fix our problem,” Ignis intervened before they got carried away any further. “Any other suggestions?”

All of them exchanged quiet looks before Noctis gave a brief sigh.

“I could warp,” he suggested. “Take Prompto with me.”

“No,” Gladio, Ignis and Cor replied in unison.

“Six, no!” squealed Prompto.

Noctis starred at each of his retainers for a moment, torn between reminding them that he was not a twelve-year-old anymore or simply going through with his idea to prove a point. Then he glanced at his best friend, who looked like he was trying to downplay the little squeak that had just escaped his throat.

“Dude,” Prompto said, raising his hands in a surrendering gesture. “No offense, but I’ve been trying to keep my lunch in since we got down here, and I’m not gonna let you ruin my streak.”

“Seriously?”

“Sorry.”

“I _can_ do it!” Noctis protested once more.

“And we don’t doubt that,” Ignis voice floated down to them. “But I think we should put Prompto’s well-being first.”

Despite that, Noctis somehow still very much felt that Ignis did doubt him. Several incidents from their shared training exercises were all too vivid in his mind, but damnit, that had been ages ago! He was perfectly capable of side-by-side warping, and if Prompto couldn’t hold in his lunch, that wasn’t his fault.

“Fine,” Noctis growled and crossed his arms, looking back to the tunnel leading further down into the sewers. “So, do we split up now or what?”

“It looks like we haven’t got a choice,” Cor conceded with a shrug.

Although it was rather clear from the look on his face that he didn’t like the thought either.

“Unless, of course, Ignis and I lower Gladio down, so he can pull the two of you up?”

“You’re joking, right?”

Cor threw Gladio a deadpan look.

“Speaking of which,” Ignis intercepted and pushed his glasses up. “One of us _should_ join you.”

At that, Noctis shot Ignis a g _lare_. Ignis chose to ignore it.

“Considering our surroundings, we best disperse our forces evenly,” he continued while running one hand through his hair.

Silence hung over them until Cor gave a sigh that made him sound _old_ , before sitting down on the edge of the hole.

“Listen to Ignis so you don’t get lost,” he advised Gladio as his legs dangled over the pit.

As soon as Cor looked away, the young Shield rolled his eyes while Ignis covered a smirk behind his hand. Down below, Prompto and Noctis both took a step aside, pressing against the wet walls.

“Careful,” the gunslinger warned. “It’s quite a drop.”

Cor nodded and a second later, he landed next to them with the water splashing up around them. Once more, all of them did their best to not think about the contents of the water. Instead, Noctis offered the Marshal a hand.

“Welcome to hell,” he murmured and pulled the other man to his feet. “Glad you could make it.”

“I thought it’d be warmer down here,” the Marshal replied with the hint of a smile on his face.

“That _would_ be nice, right?” Prompto agreed while rubbing his upper arms. “So, what’s next?”

“We split up,” Gladio said from above and slowly rose to his full size. “And we meet again here in... Whaddaya say Iggy, an hour?”

The strategist nodded.

“That sounds like a sufficient amount of time,” he decided. “If we do not meet before that.”

Gladio hummed in agreement and gave Ignis a pat on the shoulder as they started walking away from the hole.

“Try not to get yourselves killed,” he ordered before vanishing out of sight. “And respect your elderly!”

“Physician, heal thyself!” Noctis called after them from below while Cor gave an exhausted groan.

When Gladio’s answer was too muffled to be heard clearly, the prince shrugged and turned towards his companions. Prompto was observing something sticky on the tip of his shoe with visible disgust while Cor was readjusting his flashlight.

“Shall we?” the Marshall asked when he noticed Noctis’s lingering eyes and gestured towards the tunnel leading downwards.

“Down the drain?” Prompto added while eying the sloping path that lay ahead of them.

The others turned around, peering into the narrow canal vanishing in the darkness.

“Down the drain it is,” Noctis said and took the first step forward.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by me watching my best friend play the game after having finished it before her. When she went into the Crestholm Channels I remembered a hole on the upper levels and warned her not to fall through it during the inevitable fight taking place in the narrow space - which she immediately failed to do. She spent 15 minutes wandering through the nightmare labyrinth calling itself a dungeon, trying to find her way back up. Which is totally not exactly the same thing that has happened to me when first visiting this dungeon, not at all.
> 
> Anyway, I wrote this story about our shared idiocy, and because Matt Mercer is basically my religion at this point, I decided to throw Cor into the mix. Just a little casual dungeon exploring with our four best boys and everyone's favourite Marshal. What's not to like about that?
> 
> If you have made it this far, thank you for reading. If you want to share your pain about the FF XV dungeons, feel free to do so. ;)  
> Yell at me on Twitter [@procrastynol](https://twitter.com/procrastynol) or find me on [Tumblr](https://procrastynol.tumblr.com/). Kudos and comments are always much appreciated! 😊🖤


End file.
